Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"...he play becomes a weird, four-sided love story in which two of the lovers are intent on eating the other two. Barsotti's sense of intercouple dynamics is strictly conventional, his ending is not unexpected, and his Karen is not quite, uh, fleshed out as a character. But under Anne Adams's direction, the production is compelling all the same, expressing the longing and hopelessness that Karen and Gary certainly feel and exploiting our inability to gauge whether Molly and Joe feel anything at all. A moment of possible communion between Gary and Molly is at once uncanny and emotionally powerful."
Windy City Times - Recommended
"...As the tightly paced story winds on (punctuated by some of the most effectively used blackouts we've ever seen), the intriguingly troubled history of this four-way friendship unwinds as the desperation increases. The end, as you might expect, isn't pretty. But it is as perverse a happily-ever-after as you could possibly want from a tale of love among ghouls."
Chicago Free Press - Highly Recommended
"...Director Anne Adams keeps things moving at a nerve rattling pace while simultaneously highlighting Barsotti’s tight humor and multiple emotional shifts. She is adroitly aided by the show’s entire crew (including detail oriented Anna Brenner and Coye Vega) who keep the blood and William Castle like effects passionately pumping."
Centerstage - Somewhat Recommended
"...Nothing exposes deep-seated relationship tensions like a zombie apocalypse. "The Revenants," a flawed gem from the horror-focused WildClaw Theatre, presents lovers besieged by memory, heartache and walking corpses. The show doesn't fully deliver on its promising premise, but does find new life in the b-movie tropes from which it draws inspiration."
Chicago Stage Review - Recommended
"...WildClaw Theatre is “dedicated to bringing the world of horror to the stage.” A daunting task, as horror on stage is almost never horrifying. If the spectator were also a participant, like a patron of a haunted house, they might readily scream for their life — but not a theatergoer comfortably seated, program in hand. WildClaw Theatre’s production of The Revenants did not horrify me, but it continually made me think that it could."
Time Out Chicago - Somewhat Recommended
"...Future scholars will talk about our era’s zombie drama in the same breath as the Jacobite revenge tragedy or ’40s and ’50s noir. Each highly formalized genre comprises metaphors whose richness varies in direct proportion to their bluntness, speaking to eternal concerns yet tied to the specific cultural anxieties of its time. Barsotti’s new play is more concerned with the psychosexual possibilities of the whole trope. His basic scenario is a breakthrough: The sort-of lead couple is locked in a basement with their precariously harnessed, zombified former significant others."
ChicagoCritic - Somewhat Recommended
"...WildClaw Theatre’s production values from the scary sound effects (by Mikhail Fiksel) to the eerie lighting (by Paul Foster) on the realistic set (by Charlie Athanas) with fabulous makeup (by Sania Panayotova) and costumes (by Allison Greaves) are the real stars of The Revenants. Add excellent zombie work from Brian Amidei and Laura Hooper and fine turns form Jenny Strubin and Ryan Patrick Dolan and The Revenants should be a terrific show—right? Wrong. The problem is the script."
Chicago Stage and Screen - Recommended
"...Anne Adams impressively directs an excellent cast. All of the pieces are there but they never fully fall into place as Barsotti's interesting, yet flawed, script meanders off task. You have four people trapped in a basement with bloodthirsty zombies outside. To make matters worse, two of the escapees have been bitten and have turned into full-blown zombies themselves. Because that isn't enough, the two that are left intact are the spouses of the leashed up flesh-eaters!"
